Paxton High School - Reflector Yearbook (Paxton, IL)

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THE PAXTON HIGH SCHOOL REFLECTOR 7 llmtr Haratimt Vacation! Yes, that word has been in your thoughts for some time There is a subtle thrill in the sunshine, a far-away call in the murmur of the breeze. The most diligent at times have looked clear ttirough their books with the X-ray vision of that gentle malady, the spring fever. Even the brick walls of the school have melted into transparency. Wiiat walk so thick as to entirely shut out the spirit of spring-awakened nature? Press your eyelids tight, if you will, but you can’t help seeing those clumps of trees at the brook side, with the bringht sunshine on tae tender, glossy green of their twinkling leaves. The grasses beneath the trees are snort as yet but not too short to vibrate with the magic wind that comes wandering across the prairie. As of old we know not whence it comem and whitner it goeth. It breathes the spirit of romantic unrest like that in the heart of youth. Tis a siren song that nature sings these days, a song both in sound and color. A siren song, I repeat, for while duties remain to be performed-, twere better your ears were sealed with wax like those of the mariners of I lysses, lest you be wrecked upon the rocks of examinations. But there will shortly come a time for all of you, I hope, when vacation will be here indeed. What will you do with it? Perhaps most of you will have that question decided for you, in part at least. The school books will be gathering dust on the closet shelf, but the lawn mower will be waiting for you. The lawn mower, of course, is but one of the many grim substitutes for Virgil’s Aeneid and dear old VT.Iliken and Gale. But for most of you the vacation will bring release from regular and pressing duties, leisure to spend your time more or less as you please. How will you spend it? No, I do not intend to map out a course of study for you. That would be as futile as to map out a stra ght path for the swallows be-for a storm. But I trust your vacation will not mean vacuity. And what I wish to talk to you about is the relation of books to brooks, of literature to landscapes Literature, I say. I have no reference here to light books for summer reading.” Such are likely to be so very light that you might better listen to the wind blowing through a knot-hole or let your thoughts soar skyward upon the wings of the thistle down. Eut, on the other hand, I am not advocating the reading of ponderous, untried works, the proper understanding of which would require you to carrv with you Webster’s Unabridged and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Not these but the fragments of literature which you have already studied, whose references and terminology are fairly familiar to you. Not so much now to know what the authors meant as what they felt. Some of you, perhaps, have been living under a delusion as to what a book is. You have supposed it to be paper and pasteboard. It is associated in your mind with dusty shelves, long imprisonment, and irksome restraint. But that is not a book at all—no more than a sheath is a sword, no more than your clothes are you. A book is a living voice, a perpetuated personality, a choice spirit waiting to be your constant companion—perhaps your guardian angel When you shoulder that gun or snatch up that fishing rod and set out for the fields and woods, why not put a little book in your pocket? In a package smaller than the bait-can you may have that which will coax the sprites from the pinging water and the dryads from the woods. Read Tennyson’s Brook Song there beside the real brook and see how the murmuring water adds power and beautiy to the poem and how the poem enhances and refines the beauty and melody of the brook. This is but one illustration out of ten thousand. How about that troublesome Ode, of Wordworth; On the Intimations of Immortality—not to mention the rest of the title. Try the magic of that poem by the stillness of

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6 THE PAXTON HIGH SCHOOL REFLECTOR JUNIOR-SENIOR BANQUET. Juniors and Seniors mingle and for the last time as a united body the upper classmen take meat. For the last time they gather about the festive board and laughter light dies off when each communes within himself how “so soon and it is sped. A solemn hush falls over all and the life that is whirls away on the wings of the storm, to the life that is to be. Speaker after speaker stands to the silence and acknowledges its respect. Speaker after speaker humors and moves his hearers. Speaker after speaker sits to their loud approval; and then the hand-writing on the wall, soon and it is sped”; and the ominous, throbbing hush. Seniors and Juniors have met. Henceforth, the strands of their lives run separately for they have come to the parting of the ways and have supped at the house which stands in the ways where all enter, but where each goes out his own appointed door. Never was there such a banquet. In the annals of high school life there stands no equal. This banquet was a banquet by itself. The prevailing spirit seemed tempered with something more than class spirit, something more than high school custom, something greater than friendlly gathering; for the years of their life spent each in each, have bound the rugged edges of tneir characters into the perfect figure, sinewed of honor and crowned with an undying fidelity to their Alma Mater and its interpreters. The following is the program rendered after the serving of the elaborate and sumptuous menu: Howard McCracken .............................................. Toastmaster Address of Welcome .................................................... Irene Richards Response ................................................. Joseph Gourley Funny Side of School Life ................................... Merrie Mill's Loss and Gain ........................................... Walter Nelson Gain and Loss............................................ Edwin Johnson “And Paintful Pleasure Turns to Pleasing Paine” (Spenser’s Faerie Queene) ............................................ Mattie Apland Book Knowledge and Common Sense.........................John Karl Moffett Reading ................................................ Lucy Frankl.n Reading ............................................... Esther Engstro.n Vocal Solo—Don’t You Mind the Sorrows (Eugene Cowles).......Marie McRill

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8 THE PAXTON HIGH SCHOOL PE ELEC TOP some lake in the morning’s mists or under the sunset’s golden spell. Yes, and Tintern Abbey and a multitude of others from the same author, till you feel what the mere words can never bring to you, what the living, loving poet himself felt when the wrote of “A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thouoght” Try Bryant’s Thanatopsis in the actual shade of the “venerable woods” or by the “rivers that move in majesty.” And if any of you should be camping, get up some morning and read, beneath the sweet opening smile of the dawn, that incomparable little lyric of joyous optimism beginning— “The year’s at the spring And day's at the morn.” And then Browning will not be an enigma but an interpretor. But the best way to carry a book to the woods and fields is not in your pocket but in your heart and soul. Memory has magic reception halls for all visitants, and these halls you may carry with you with no sense of fatigue. You may have these halls, if you will, thronged with the spirits of the world’s wisest and best, speaking to you the thoughts of the choice moments of their lives. With this grand retinue ever at hand, there can be no chill solitude anywhere. Their spirits will not “sit in the clouds and mock” but stoop from the bending heavens to bless and inspire you. The mountain will be more massive for their presence, the forest more shadowy, suggestive, indeed the whole world of nature, from the arching sky above to the ever variant earth below, will be a living temple. CHARLES A. LANGWORTHY. JUST A LITTLE ADVICE. We’re going to leave you, Juniors, Sophmores, and Freshmen, too. But then we’ll give you some advice and tell you what to do. For when we are all gone and are no longer here. You’ll have no one to watch you as you have had this year. Now' if you want to all gain glory and renown. Just listen and give heed to what we here write down. Now first we would advise you to situdy good and hard. And get a better mark on your next year’s report card. Then you must always bring your books to class, Now, Juniors, don’t let this notice go past. For i't might mean the loss of a whole recitation. And undoubtedly ruin your good reputation. In the Chemistry Lab. leave all acids alone, For compounds of sulphur, to you are unknown; They’re bound to cause trouble, along with strong snuff. Your salvation lies in abhorring such stuff, For both have caused trouble in old P. H. S. And we missed some school ma'es for a week or less. And then the clock pendulums, leave them alone, Or else for your deeds, you may later atone. Say, who stole the clapper? Get up and confess. Next applies to Sophies and Freshmen. I guess. But the one up there now, has been put there to stay. So of course there’s no danger of it walking away. Now if there are other tricks you have done heretofore, And, perhaps they would number some two score or more. We think it wise to stop them this day. And begin to work and not Just play. For maybe then as the years shall pass, You will win as much fame as the '09 class. —Lillie Kelly, ’09.